


The sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns and moons

by MissFlitworth



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Implied Relationships, M/M, Post-Canon, growing things, working out love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22870420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissFlitworth/pseuds/MissFlitworth
Summary: More gardens, musings on love, ducks, drunkeness.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	The sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns and moons

**Author's Note:**

> I just love imagining them in gardens. 
> 
> title is from Under Milkwood.

“I don’t know how to do this right,” Aziraphale tells Crowley, sometime around 1980. 

He’s so drunk. Gin and pineapple-juice is deceptively sweet and the day is hot, the garden they’re sat in hardly shady. The tree they’re under is so small and hasn’t thrived. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley slurs. “You’re doin’ it again.”

He’s lying, limbs all around him like they’re discarded, starfished out in the grass. He turns his head and blinks, cheek brushed by the long grass, eyes free of their ever-present glass for once. Aziraphale gazes at him, enjoying the sway of the earth, the fuzz and blurr as he blinks.

“ _ An _ gel,” Crowley says, stirring himself a little more, hand flailing to rest on Aziraphale’s knee. He looks meaningfully up. Aziraphale follows his gaze and beams - the tree is grown broader, leaves unfurling healthy and green. “Stop it, you’ll draw attention.”

The tree stills, and Aziraphale casts a look around. It’s a small patch, a shed, side by side with another allotment and another and another. They aren’t the only ones out to garden today, but no one is close. No one is looking askance at the tree. Aziraphale leaves it be, though; he has enough shade now and something to lean against. Crowley flops back, relaxing again. Aziraphale casts about for his flask, then miracles it the last inch when he can't reach, tops up their glasses. 

“What were you sayin’?” Crowley asks, wrapping his hand around his glass and resting it on his chest but not sitting up. Aziraphale takes a few sips of his own and lets his head fall back, closes his eyes against the sun, lets the warmth sink into him. 

“I was just saying…” Aziraphale trails off. Crowley sits up and leans into Aziraphale’s bent knee, facing him, feet against the tree. Aziraphale tucks his arms in close and gulps down the rest of his drink. “I don’t know how to do this, or even what it is.”

“Gin, I think,” Crowley says. Aziraphale doesn’t open his eyes but he knows Crowley’s peering into his glass. “Good gin. Nice juice. Did you put mint in here?”

“Yes. I like the leaves,” Aziraphale says. 

“Weird,” Crowley says. Then, sounding pleased, “solved it.”

“I know what I’m drinking,” Aziraphale snaps, opening his eyes to glare. “I don’t know what  _ this  _ is and I don’t know what to call it because when I called it fraternising you got cross.”

“You were cross firs’,” Crowley says, promptly, not missing a beat. “When? What are you talkin’ about?”

“There is something that is missing,” Aziraphale explains, sloshing more juice into his glass from the flask. “I’m good at, at,” he gestures, splashing Crowley, “and people like me. I charm. And then there are things like friendship and, and, and demons wanting the phone number for the shop and they, they, you  _ like  _ me, but then you all get cross. I don’t do the next bit right, I don’t know what it is that you all want from me.”

“Oh,” Crowley says, eyes all wide. He looks like he’s trying very hard to be serious and listen. His eyes are looking right at Aziraphale’s face, and if Aziraphale looks back it will be all there, all of Crowley’s inside-ness right there in his eyes and spilling out into the world and burning over Aziraphale like waves, and Aziraphale is empty, it all just echoes and hurts. “Hmm, yeah. People get cross about a lot of stuff.”

“You’re touching me,” Aziraphale says. “I don’t know why.”

“Comfy knees,” Crowley says, resting his head on his arm and humming happily. “Can’t stay upright.”

“Well, yes, that makes sense. I don’t know when people touch or why or what it means. I don’t want to be annoying and intrude on people and get in the way, take up all the precious time. I don’t understand,” Aziraphale says. “And then there’s love!”

“Like the birds,” Crowley says, as if agreeing.

“What?”

“Love birds,” Crowley says. He frowns. “Is that a category? A type. Like, um, blackbirds, bluejays, love birds? Or just any birds that are in love? Can ducks be love birds?”

“Ducks?”

“Yeah. Probably fall in love all the time, ducks,” Crowley says. 

“What have ducks got to do with anything?” Aziraphale says. “I’m good at love.”

“You’r’n angel, course y’are,” Crowley says. 

“It’s all wrong,” Aziraphale says, sadly. Too much, too intense, too quick, the wrong people, the wrong time, what he does and says  _ isn’t  _ love afterall, he’s too stupid at it. Never gets it right. He takes Crowley’s glass and finishes what’s left in it. “I do it wrong, so I try not to.”

“‘s’at why flowers ‘n weeds stopped sprouting out’ve all the cracks and that, at your shop?” Crowley asks. 

“I’m drunk,” Aziraphale says. The world is spinning around him. “‘s’all moving.”

“I will walk you home,” Crowley says. “I’ll do it  _ gallantly. _ ”

Aziraphale gets to his feet, which is a struggle. Home sounds nice, but far, and it’s so hot. He sits back in the grass, then goes all the way down, lying on his back and staring up. Crowley laughs, pleased, and sprawls beside him again, so close. It’s nice. Aziraphale sighs and stops trying to explain why he can’t do this. It's all a muddle and confusing and he has so many doubts. It's quiet and warm and he's fuzzy with gin though, for now, so he lets it all go.

“Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love,” Crowley mumbles, drawing Aziraphale out of his thoughts. 

“I never did, dear,” Aziraphale says. The sun beats down on them. “I never did.”

**

Sometime after the conclusion of the Great Plan, Heaven and Hell’s plans thwarted, Aziraphale discovers that Crowley has a garden. It’s overgrown with brambles and bamboo, dandelions, anything with tough, stubborn roots. Aziraphale gets a spade and sits out there with a flask of tea, and by the end of the week things are back in harmony. The bamboo is gone, it never meant to be there to start with; the brambles are in the hedge surrounding them, working on some blackberries; the dandelions are less. The grass is long and wild and full of flowers, and there’s a border near the block of flats that Aziraphale buys some herbs for and calls it a kitchen garden. He puts in some lettuce and strawberries as well, and sits to watch it all grow. 

“You should listen to radio four,” Crowley says, coming sauntering out with a jug and glasses and folding himself to sit cross-legged among the grass. “This is not how humans garden.”

“Tosh,” Aziraphale says. “I watched a documentary. They take out the bamboo, it’s bad for the soil. What are we drinking?”

“Margaritas,” Crowley says, pulling a lime out of his pocket and clicking his fingers. It slices itself and he tips them into the jug before pouring. Aziraphale holds his up to the light, admiring it. “No trees, this time?” 

“No,” Aziraphale says, carefully not looking at Crowley’s neighbour’s apple tree, which is now reaching over the hedge into Crowley’s garden, boughs sure to be full of apples come autumn. They can make apple and blackberry crumble. “Do you know, there’s nothing stopping me now?”

“From growing ridiculous trees? Go ahead, it’s not a big garden though,” Crowley says. Aziraphale flicks his wrist so that little pink umbrellas appear in their glasses. They are decorated with hearts. 

“No. There is nothing stopping me asking you,” Aziraphale says. Crowley makes an impatient noise and puts his umbrella in Aziraphale’s glass. 

“Asking me what?”

“What it all means!” Aziraphale says. “This, us, me. Why you do it. Inviting me to Alpha Centauri, saving me, saving my books, quoting Hamlet at me. You didn’t even  _ like  _ that one!”

“It means, you fool, that I love you,” Crowley says. 

“...oh.”

Crowley waits for more, but Aziraphale doesn’t have any more. Crowley makes a harsh, irritable sound and downs his glass, refilling it and picking out the slices of lime Aziraphale likes from the jug, dropping them all into his own drink. Aziraphale watches. 

“Too fast? Bloody hell, Aziraphale. Come  _ on _ .”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Aziraphale says. “I’m not a bad angel for not being able to give you what you want, be what you want.”

“What do I want?” Crowley asks. “In that great big brain of yours, what is it you’re missing? Because from where I’m sat, you’re enough.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, again, flashing hot and then cold all over. “Just as we are?”

“You said slow down, and I did, and I realised you loved me already,” Crowley says. “You do, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve always known,” Aziraphale says. “You’re very easy to love. I want you to be happy, and to be safe.”

“Come what may, I do adore thee so that danger shall seem sport,” Crowley says. 

“Stop it,” Aziraphale says. “That one is hardly funny.”

“It’s very funny, just because it’s cruel doesn’t mean it can’t be funny,” Crowley says. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou are more lovely and more temperate.”

“Then,” Aziraphale says, shutting his eyes, “I will love you. If you permit it.”

“If I- it’s hardly me saying no, is it?” Crowley says. “Oh fine, I ‘permit it’. Go ahead, Aziraphale, love me all you like.”

Aziraphale sighs long, breathing deep. He’s had faith for a very long time, though less so recently, but love? To love and be allowed to love, whole-hearted, not holding back? That has been rare. 

“Bloody hell, it’s definitely not the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, this is hardly subtle,” Crowley grumbles. 

Aziraphale opens his eyes. The garden is full of apples and blackberries, bursting with ripeness. Oops. 

“We can make crumble early,” Aziraphale says, beaming. 

Crowley groans and leans against Aziraphale’s knees, gazing at him. Aziraphale smiles back. 


End file.
